manicdepressivesblog

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neil gaiman and allan heinberg rewriting the corinthian — one of the very first openly homosexual characters in american mainstream comics who in story has been fighting for his autonomy since 1989 — as a newborn who has been stripped of all memory and will to rebel in order to be gifted as a sex object to a woman is a part of queer history. the way people react to it is a part of queer history. what is done in response to it is queer history.

the stories we tell each other — especially those that are popularized with general audiences — matter. that’s the entire message of the sandman in the first place.

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I am a Corinthian x Johanna hater sorry

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I assume you were trying to get my attention. Now that you’ve got it… tell me why I shouldn’t kill you. BOYD HOLBROOK as THE CORINTHIAN in The Sandman (2022) Dir. Neil Gaiman

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Across the Dreams - (Morpheus x fem!reader)

Summary: You meet him in your dreams. You do not know him or his name, you only know that he returns to you every night, taking you in ways you crave but do not understand.

warnings: dream sex but it's not very explicit. not proofread.

A/N: I (nervously) present the long anticipated morpheus one shot. This is for all of you little rascals in my inbox asking me to get done with it and post it. Hope you enjoy and lmk what you think!!

༻♛༺

You do not quite recall when exactly you started seeing him. Maybe it was on one of those nights you were so exhausted your limbs melted into your bed like they belonged there more than they belonged on your body. Perhaps he came to you then, slipped through the cracks of your half-forgotten dreams, weaving himself in your fantasies that never quite made architectural sense.

All you know is that he was there.

And he was there every night.

You always felt him before you saw him. The shadowed edges of your dreams would forge into the shape of him—him who was tall, lean, little more than the glimmer of pale skin visible beneath the dark coat that brushed the floor of your subconscious and somehow stirred even though there was no wind.

His wild hair fell in black, inky strands that framed the sharp edges of his face but never seemed to settle. It was as if the air refused to touch him, or maybe it was him who refused to belong to the air, or perhaps he owned the very air around him. His skin was pale—not the delicate pallor of the sleepless, but the absence of sunlight itself, as if he had stood untouched for centuries beneath a sky that forgot how to burn.

And then there were his eyes.

Oh, his eyes.

His eyes were so incredibly black, like bottomless pits that offered you a glimpse of the vast darkness of the cosmos. And there were stars in his eyes. You did not see them at first. You had to step closer. You did not remember deciding to move, but you did. Your feet dragged forward, slow and helpless, and when you lifted your gaze you saw it— the faintest glimmer of stars trapped inside his eyes.

The sight of them was enough to pin you in place the first time. Because that was when you realised.

He was old.

Not old in the sense of years or decades. No.

He was old in the way stories are old. Old in the way stars are old. Old in the way you were never supposed to see, or know, or touch. But you did.

The first time, you remember you were hesitant. You remember how slowly you had rose your arm, your fingertips sparking with something desperate, aching to close the impossible space between you and touch his skin. You remember how his dark eyes had followed every movement of your hand, brows twitching—the faintest ripple across his otherwise unmoved face— as if amused, and also surprised, perhaps even outraged at your presumption that you could dare touch him.

He stopped you.

He caught your hand before you could complete the touch, his fingers cool as they closed firmly around yours, pressing your hand down as if to remind you. Of what, you did not quite know back then.

It was only later, after countless times of seeing him in your dreams that you realised. When you first touched, it had to have been on his terms.

His gaze slid over you—not with tenderness, but with a kind of distant permission, the way one might allow a flame to flicker a little closer to the drapes just to see what happens.

His other hand rose with deliberate slowness, trailing up to graze the edge of your jaw. His touch was impossibly cool, his skin like marble—unforgiving at first, but yielding in the places where he chose to let you feel him. His thumb dragged slowly along your lower lip, and he looked at you as if you were not entirely real. Funny, considering how he was a man made of shadows with the entire cosmos held in his eyes. You remember the weight of his fingers against you. You remember leaning into it.

You did not know his name. You did not ask.

After that first encounter, the dreams pressed closer, hotter, rougher—your body pinned beneath his as he claimed you against the wall of some crumbling hall, the slick grass of a forest that flickered in and out of coherence, the ground, the marble floor of a castle, still and perhaps never making architectural sense.

You never begged him to stop. But you did beg him not to leave.

And he did not. Night after night, he returned. He touched you like he knew the notes to the strings of your body, and your soul and body sang for him in response. He filled you with his essence, and hoped his seed would take. You knew because he whispered it in your ear like a dirty, secret confession. Every night.

Overtime, you learned to claim him too. You shed your shyness, climbed him boldly like his lap was your throne to sit on, and touched him like it was your birthright.

It went on for months.

And every time you woke from these dreams, you could always feel the lingering echo of his touch, as if it had been seared into your skin. You spent your waking hours in turmoil, thinking about your dreams, about him. You were getting addicted, you could barely function during the day without wishing you could fall asleep, fall into the arms of your dream man. You started going to bed earlier. You started skipping plans. You started craving sleep like it's a drug and he is the nameless dealer.

The days shrink. The nights length.

But it does not matter, not anymore, for every time you fall asleep, he is waiting. Like tonight.

The moment your conscious enters the Dreaming, his weight settles over you like velvet and iron, but you do not mind, it is an ache you ache to bear. Like every night, he claims you. He takes you against the trembling edge of reason, until the line between you and him feels like it was never there.

You still have not asked for his name. You fear what would happen if you spoke it aloud. You don’t know if you are dreaming, or if the dreaming has devoured you whole.

But you want to know, you need to know it for your own sanity.

So once he had his way with ruining you, you decide, for the first time in months, you decide to voice the question. Your lips part, your breath shallow against his palm, still cool against your jaw.

"...Who are you?"

His head tilts, just slightly, the faintest quirk of his mouth appearing as though the question itself amused him more than any answer he might give.

His thumb ghosts over your lower lip, slow and thoughtful.

“That is not a question you should ask.” His voice curls into you, soft and dark and ancient.

But you do not back down. "You have absolutely ruined me for anyone else. I believe I deserve at least the curtesy of knowing your name." The words rush out before you can stop them. and even you are surprised at your own bravery to be so direct with him.

His brows lift, a flicker of something behind his eyes—interest, perhaps. Or patience thinning.

So you decide to soften your request. "Please," you swallow, pulse thudding in your throat.

“You may call me…” A pause, deliberate one. “…Morpheus.”

You whisper it back to him, testing the shape of it in your mouth. "Morpheus."

His gaze darkens at the way his name falls from your lips. You fear for a moment he might pin you beneath him and have his way for the second time in one night. But he does not. He quenches the fire rising beneath his skin instead.

“Careful,” he says, his thumb pressing just slightly harder against your lip. “Names are powerful things.”

It sounds like a warning, one you think you need to heed, but before you can say anything in response, you jolt awake suddenly.

Once again, alone, in your bed.

You release a heavy sigh and look at the ceiling helplessly. You ask the heavens how long you can bear to live like this— living in your dreams, dreading your waking hours. How long you can continue being in love with a man who does not exist.

You close your eyes and imagine him. "Morpheus," you whisper to yourself wistfully. You half expect him to be there when you open your eyes, and you laugh at yourself with pity when he is not.

You push the covers away, and decide you need to start getting on with your day.

You’re still heavy with the weight of last night’s dream when you step outside. The city hums around you, a thin, irritating buzz—car horns, rubber on asphalt, hurried footfalls. You barely notice them. It is him you are thinking about. His hands, his mouth, his breath against your throat. His name.

You approach the crosswalk, waiting for the sign to change. And then, the air shifts. The sound of the city drops out like someone’s cut the wires.

With furrowed brows, you slowly lift your head. And then—

You see him.

Your body freezes. Because it is him. Across the street. Standing perfectly still, untouched by the blur of people rushing past him. He’s wearing that long, black coat—the same one you’ve clutched in your fists, the same one you’ve felt brushing your bare skin in sleep. His hair falls in black waves around his face, just as it does when he leans over you, when his hands pin you to the floor of the dreams.

His skin is impossibly pale. His eyes are—

Your breath catches.

They’re the same. The same impossible, depthless black, the same faint shimmer of stars caught in the dark.

He’s real.

He’s real. Here. Now.

And he’s looking at you.

Not past you. Not through you.

At you.

The corner of his mouth twitches, just enough to be deliberate. Enough to tease you, or perhaps taunt you, you do not know. You do not care to know. You need to cross the road to him. Now.

The crosswalk signal changes.

Heart hammering, throat burning, you take a step towards him.

A car horn blares somewhere behind you.

When you blink, he’s gone.

༻♛༺

[manicdepressivesblog]

Across the Dreams - (Morpheus x fem!reader)

Summary: You meet him in your dreams. You do not know him or his name, you only know that he returns to you every night, taking you in ways you crave but do not understand.

warnings: dream sex but it's not very explicit. not proofread.

A/N: I (nervously) present the long anticipated morpheus one shot. This is for all of you little rascals in my inbox asking me to get done with it and post it. Hope you enjoy and lmk what you think!!

༻♛༺

You do not quite recall when exactly you started seeing him. Maybe it was on one of those nights you were so exhausted your limbs melted into your bed like they belonged there more than they belonged on your body. Perhaps he came to you then, slipped through the cracks of your half-forgotten dreams, weaving himself in your fantasies that never quite made architectural sense.

All you know is that he was there.

And he was there every night.

You always felt him before you saw him. The shadowed edges of your dreams would forge into the shape of him—him who was tall, lean, little more than the glimmer of pale skin visible beneath the dark coat that brushed the floor of your subconscious and somehow stirred even though there was no wind.

His wild hair fell in black, inky strands that framed the sharp edges of his face but never seemed to settle. It was as if the air refused to touch him, or maybe it was him who refused to belong to the air, or perhaps he owned the very air around him. His skin was pale—not the delicate pallor of the sleepless, but the absence of sunlight itself, as if he had stood untouched for centuries beneath a sky that forgot how to burn.

And then there were his eyes.

Oh, his eyes.

His eyes were so incredibly black, like bottomless pits that offered you a glimpse of the vast darkness of the cosmos. And there were stars in his eyes. You did not see them at first. You had to step closer. You did not remember deciding to move, but you did. Your feet dragged forward, slow and helpless, and when you lifted your gaze you saw it— the faintest glimmer of stars trapped inside his eyes.

The sight of them was enough to pin you in place the first time. Because that was when you realised.

He was old.

Not old in the sense of years or decades. No.

He was old in the way stories are old. Old in the way stars are old. Old in the way you were never supposed to see, or know, or touch. But you did.

The first time, you remember you were hesitant. You remember how slowly you had rose your arm, your fingertips sparking with something desperate, aching to close the impossible space between you and touch his skin. You remember how his dark eyes had followed every movement of your hand, brows twitching—the faintest ripple across his otherwise unmoved face— as if amused, and also surprised, perhaps even outraged at your presumption that you could dare touch him.

He stopped you.

He caught your hand before you could complete the touch, his fingers cool as they closed firmly around yours, pressing your hand down as if to remind you. Of what, you did not quite know back then.

It was only later, after countless times of seeing him in your dreams that you realised. When you first touched, it had to have been on his terms.

His gaze slid over you—not with tenderness, but with a kind of distant permission, the way one might allow a flame to flicker a little closer to the drapes just to see what happens.

His other hand rose with deliberate slowness, trailing up to graze the edge of your jaw. His touch was impossibly cool, his skin like marble—unforgiving at first, but yielding in the places where he chose to let you feel him. His thumb dragged slowly along your lower lip, and he looked at you as if you were not entirely real. Funny, considering how he was a man made of shadows with the entire cosmos held in his eyes. You remember the weight of his fingers against you. You remember leaning into it.

You did not know his name. You did not ask.

After that first encounter, the dreams pressed closer, hotter, rougher—your body pinned beneath his as he claimed you against the wall of some crumbling hall, the slick grass of a forest that flickered in and out of coherence, the ground, the marble floor of a castle, still and perhaps never making architectural sense.

You never begged him to stop. But you did beg him not to leave.

And he did not. Night after night, he returned. He touched you like he knew the notes to the strings of your body, and your soul and body sang for him in response. He filled you with his essence, and hoped his seed would take. You knew because he whispered it in your ear like a dirty, secret confession. Every night.

Overtime, you learned to claim him too. You shed your shyness, climbed him boldly like his lap was your throne to sit on, and touched him like it was your birthright.

It went on for months.

And every time you woke from these dreams, you could always feel the lingering echo of his touch, as if it had been seared into your skin. You spent your waking hours in turmoil, thinking about your dreams, about him. You were getting addicted, you could barely function during the day without wishing you could fall asleep, fall into the arms of your dream man. You started going to bed earlier. You started skipping plans. You started craving sleep like it's a drug and he is the nameless dealer.

The days shrink. The nights length.

But it does not matter, not anymore, for every time you fall asleep, he is waiting. Like tonight.

The moment your conscious enters the Dreaming, his weight settles over you like velvet and iron, but you do not mind, it is an ache you ache to bear. Like every night, he claims you. He takes you against the trembling edge of reason, until the line between you and him feels like it was never there.

You still have not asked for his name. You fear what would happen if you spoke it aloud. You don’t know if you are dreaming, or if the dreaming has devoured you whole.

But you want to know, you need to know it for your own sanity.

So once he had his way with ruining you, you decide, for the first time in months, you decide to voice the question. Your lips part, your breath shallow against his palm, still cool against your jaw.

"...Who are you?"

His head tilts, just slightly, the faintest quirk of his mouth appearing as though the question itself amused him more than any answer he might give.

His thumb ghosts over your lower lip, slow and thoughtful.

“That is not a question you should ask.” His voice curls into you, soft and dark and ancient.

But you do not back down. "You have absolutely ruined me for anyone else. I believe I deserve at least the curtesy of knowing your name." The words rush out before you can stop them. and even you are surprised at your own bravery to be so direct with him.

His brows lift, a flicker of something behind his eyes—interest, perhaps. Or patience thinning.

So you decide to soften your request. "Please," you swallow, pulse thudding in your throat.

“You may call me…” A pause, deliberate one. “…Morpheus.”

You whisper it back to him, testing the shape of it in your mouth. "Morpheus."

His gaze darkens at the way his name falls from your lips. You fear for a moment he might pin you beneath him and have his way for the second time in one night. But he does not. He quenches the fire rising beneath his skin instead.

“Careful,” he says, his thumb pressing just slightly harder against your lip. “Names are powerful things.”

It sounds like a warning, one you think you need to heed, but before you can say anything in response, you jolt awake suddenly.

Once again, alone, in your bed.

You release a heavy sigh and look at the ceiling helplessly. You ask the heavens how long you can bear to live like this— living in your dreams, dreading your waking hours. How long you can continue being in love with a man who does not exist.

You close your eyes and imagine him. "Morpheus," you whisper to yourself wistfully. You half expect him to be there when you open your eyes, and you laugh at yourself with pity when he is not.

You push the covers away, and decide you need to start getting on with your day.

You’re still heavy with the weight of last night’s dream when you step outside. The city hums around you, a thin, irritating buzz—car horns, rubber on asphalt, hurried footfalls. You barely notice them. It is him you are thinking about. His hands, his mouth, his breath against your throat. His name.

You approach the crosswalk, waiting for the sign to change. And then, the air shifts. The sound of the city drops out like someone’s cut the wires.

With furrowed brows, you slowly lift your head. And then—

You see him.

Your body freezes. Because it is him. Across the street. Standing perfectly still, untouched by the blur of people rushing past him. He’s wearing that long, black coat—the same one you’ve clutched in your fists, the same one you’ve felt brushing your bare skin in sleep. His hair falls in black waves around his face, just as it does when he leans over you, when his hands pin you to the floor of the dreams.

His skin is impossibly pale. His eyes are—

Your breath catches.

They’re the same. The same impossible, depthless black, the same faint shimmer of stars caught in the dark.

He’s real.

He’s real. Here. Now.

And he’s looking at you.

Not past you. Not through you.

At you.

The corner of his mouth twitches, just enough to be deliberate. Enough to tease you, or perhaps taunt you, you do not know. You do not care to know. You need to cross the road to him. Now.

The crosswalk signal changes.

Heart hammering, throat burning, you take a step towards him.

A car horn blares somewhere behind you.

When you blink, he’s gone.

༻♛༺

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What it’s like working with Loki 🕷️🔮

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The Corinthian himself :)

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Why you so depressed

I'm the result of what happens when you never let your introverted children leave the house as much as they should

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siblings at the goth club

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THE SANDMAN 2.05

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Tom Sturridge as Dream of The Endless in 2.01: Season of Mists.

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Destiny, Orpheus and Eurydice.

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Delirum's coat in Sandman Season 2

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The victims that have spoken up against Neil Gaiman must be taken very very seriously and it's great that people are rightly pointing out other predatory behaviour that the man has exhibited BUT saying "he literally wrote stories where underage characters had explicit scenes" or that "he advocated against banning fiction that has underage characters in an explicit context" and implying that these things were somehow symptoms of him being a predator is extremely harmful and takes the focus off of the actual harm that he has done to real people.

Being anti censorship and writing stories about sexual assault does not make you a rapist, harming real humans with your predatory behaviour and exploiting the power you have against them does.

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Stars in his eyes